Green Leaf, Black Eye, Hidden Hurt
by UnnamedElement
Summary: Sam's eldest daughter Elanor is 9 years old. She quickly bonds with Legolas when he visits the Shire-but then punches him squarely in the face! Follow a fateful afternoon for Elanor and Legolas, in which Elanor asks for help for the first time, and Legolas flounders in giving it. Legolas' fickle emotional state is yours to interpret. A little fluff, a little angst. Feb 2016 Teitho
1. Part I

_Written for the February_ Teitho! _prompt "First" (did not place)._

 **Warning(s):** Allusion to child sexual abuse (absolutely non-graphic)

 **Author's note: 1)** I feel professionally obligated to include this A/N due to subject matter. Please remember to speak your truth; ask for help. If someone tells you about something that has happened to them, report it to the people who can assist. If you're a minor, telling a mandated reporter (like a teacher or social worker), will pretty much take care of that. In many places, anyone over the age of 18 is required _**by law**_ to report **known** _ **or**_ **suspected** child abuse/neglect to both Police and Children's Services, and "failure to report" may have criminal consequences. Remember, it is _never your fault,_ and it is everyone's responsibility to stand up for children. **2)** This story aligns with the theory that hobbits have similar developmental stages to humans until they hit their adolescence/young adulthood, and then pause there for a while before fully maturing. Therefore, in this story, Elanor is developmentally and physically 9-years-old, similar to a third-grader in the US educational system.

* * *

 _ **Green Leaf, Black Eye, Hidden Hurt**_

* * *

" _Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens," said Gimli._

" _Maybe," said Elrond, "but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall."_

—" _The Ring Goes South," The Fellowship of the Ring_

* * *

 **Part I**

* * *

 **July 18, Year 8 (Fourth Age of the Sun); 1429 in Shire Reckoning**

 **Bag-End, Hobbiton-across-the-Water, the Shire**

Legolas leaned over the small washbasin that Sam had brought to the converted study where Legolas was staying during his visit to Bag-End. He rinsed the day's considerable sweat off his face and from behind his ears, and ran nimble fingers over a swollen cheek that smarted even now.

Legolas peered up into the looking glass above the desk. There, he saw his own face—fair where it was not marked—all angles softened by the candlelight. His cheekbones disappeared in shadow, and his grey eyes cut out above them, glinting still in the diminished light; he saw his round cheeks were pink beneath his tan, flushed from gentle scrubbing, and his loose amber hair—dyed golden, much like Elanor's, by the summer sun—shimmered faintly; a few of the little hobbit's unskilled braids still swung about his chin when he stood from the bowl.

Legolas poked at the right side of his face as he looked in the mirror, and smiled slightly as yet he winced for, earlier that day—for the very first time—he had been punched in the face by a hobbit. To be more clear, he had been punched in the face also, for the first time, by a child, and—more specifically than all that—by a _hobbit_ child. But given his love for the race and his new promise to know well his companions' brood while they yet were young, he was almost certain it would not be the last time his countenance suffered (especially after Pippin's announcement over dinner that Diamond was with child!).

He would though, Legolas thought absently, definitely have a black eye in the morning. The eyelid and the skin where Elanor had struck him twice were more harshly red than his usual flush, and all around it was rather puffy. Below his lower lashes, the tender half-moon curve swelled into a small hill and then began to purple outward across his skin, like a corona, but darkly distorted.

Legolas laughed lightly at the sight—Sam's daughter had a fearsome swing!

It would, indeed, be very amusing, if not for the circumstances.

But a black eye would fade, he thought, for it was the kind of injury that always left, without complication. His black eye would heal this time, and the next time, and any other time, and so too—though with much more deliberate effort— would Elanor's invisible wounds. Legolas would take many more black eyes from countless hobbit children, hobbit adults, and even the ancient might of Mordor, to assure the child had the chance to heal.

Legolas abruptly dropped his eyes from his own reflection, and studied his calloused hands in the candlelight. The green oak leaf Elanor had clutched through the entire afternoon sat there, abandoned, by the washbasin, for Elanor had insisted Legolas take it as a token for helping her.

He could not anymore dwell on this.

Legolas threw himself back onto the tiny couch at the edge of the study, and wriggled his body ungracefully so his head fit between an overstuffed pillow and the wooden armrest. His knees hooked over the couch's far end and his bare feet dangled some distance from the floor.

In that way, he settled uncomfortably—in both body and mind—into some semblance of Elven dreams.

* * *

 **Earlier that day**

"Pippin and Diamond will be here by noon with the little ones, back from their visit, and they've got news for us! So you must be back by elevenses, Elanor," Sam said to his eldest child on the front steps of Bag-End, "to help."

Sam sat on his heels in front of his daughter and grasped the dangling strings at her neckline in both hands, tightening her loose summer shift; he tied a bow loopingly and let the ends fall down the front of the salmon fabric, stopping just before the hem, where green bloomers peeked out below her knees.

Elanor nodded gravely and pressed a small hand to her chest, bowing her head to her father as if she were his squire.

Sam laughed loudly.

"But I'm serious, fair Elanorellë!" said Sam, with mischief in his eyes, and he stood now to his full height and placed calloused hands on Elanor's small shoulders. "You keep getting caught up in young Mister Greenhand's landscaping, and it's only going to get you in trouble, if it keeps making you late for supper."

Legolas leaned against the wall of Bag-End, his arms crossed in front of him and head bowed slightly so that his forehead touched lightly the overhang to the left of the large red door, and he smiled at the pair brightly. Though it felt like just a moment since the last time he had travelled to the Shire, it had actually been several years, and for Elanor that was a very long time indeed, for she had been but a toddling child when last Legolas was there, and she stood now a defiant young girl before him. And Sam was such a father! How quickly mortal time passed.

Legolas noticed now that instead of looking mock serious, Elanor was frowning fiercely at Sam with something like hurt in her eyes, and Sam looked at her, in turn, confused. Though it had been many years since Legolas was small, he remembered the pain of misunderstood conversations that often passed between father and child, and so he stepped in—perhaps unwisely—to alleviate the stress he sensed between the two.

Legolas ducked out from beneath the overhang and dropped to his heels, so he was level with Sam and only a little taller than Elanor. He raised a long, sun-stained hand to shield his light eyes from the midmorning sun.

"What your father really means, I think," said Legolas softly, leaning toward Elanor conspiratorially, "is it will be my first time meeting so many hobbit children, and you may have to teach me what to say and do, for you are the only hobbit child that yet I know. I have been told that little ones are a lot to keep up with!"

Elanor looked at her father for a moment, as if for permission. Sam nodded to her, and then Elanor turned a small smile up toward Legolas, though he noted that at the edges of her wide eyes there welled a few tears, though he dared not ask their origin—he had only been there a day and it was not his place (and he knew little of children, and nothing of hobbit children, and only feared, therefore, that asking would make whatever it was worse). But her big green eyes were like glades of grass with flecks of goldenrod, and the tears made the hazel amplify so that they shone up at Legolas like streaks of amber, and the sight made something inside him clench; he reached out timidly to tuck a long golden curl behind one of her small ears.

Elanor slipped her arms around her father's waist and then lifted up a childish hand to touch Legolas' own honey-hair. She ran pudgy fingers down the length of it and then touched the tip of his ear lightly. Legolas turned his head to the side obligingly, and she tucked a few wavy locks behind his ear, too, and then smiled at him.

"All right, Sam-dad," Elanor said. "I will be home on time, if I can."

"You mean, you _will_ be home on time," Sam corrected lovingly, patting her back as she continued to stare up at the tall elf.

"I will be home on time if Mister Greenhand will let me leave," Elanor replied softly.

Legolas turned his head back toward father and daughter and narrowed his eyes at the child for a moment, as he thought about her strange words.

"If he will _let_ you leave, Miss Elanor?" Legolas asked, feigning innocence in the tone of his question.

"Yes," said Elanor, pulling back now from her father and crossing her arms across her flat chest and slightly-rounded, youthful belly, her eyes looking at the downy brown hair on her father's feet. "Sometimes Mister Greenhand needs lots of help with his new garden, and he doesn't want me to go away when I should."

"Is that so," said Legolas evenly.

While Legolas was not so ruled by his emotions as he once had been, he still felt them as strongly. When they rose in his chest and flooded his mind in a haze, he now simply held his tongue, and let the moment recede ere he opened his mouth. It was not an altogether pleasant experience, but it had, among mortals, saved him a lot of embarrassment and pain.

So, while Legolas was confused by the power Mister Greenhand seemed to wield over Elanor, and while almost bowled over by a sudden rush of sickening worry, "is that so" was all he could think of to say. He tilted his head to the side for a moment, questioningly, but then pushed aside the ill-ease to smile at the little hobbit, instead.

Legolas' smile stirred something in Elanor, and she remembered for a moment a flash of Legolas' kind face from her much younger childhood. He had before, on the only other occasion she had met him, made Elanor a very fanciful crown of wildflowers, and then woven it into her hair with delicate braids, as if very practiced in the art of making crowns. Elanor remembered light and laughter and the lilting tease in Legolas' voice when he made a crown, too, for the gruff dwarf, Gimli, with whom he travelled that time; and Elanor remembered running under the stars with dew on her feet and flowers in her hands, chasing her father and friends until they tumbled onto the ground, and her Sam-dad had taken her into his arms, and the elf's soft voice sang until she fell asleep; but when she awoke in her own bed the next morning, Legolas and Gimli were gone.

The memory made Elanor curious again, and she looked up at Legolas now with a bright smile on her face, looking forward to the day.

"But I like to help with the siblings, Mister Legolas," Elanor said, pledging to get away from Mister Greenland and his onerous chores as quickly as possible. "And I will help you learn to talk to them, if you want, so I will come back on time, if I can, so you won't be all confused or alone."

Sam laughed and knelt again before his daughter.

"You are as queer as you are sweet, my Elanorellë," he said.

"And you are as hungry as you are smart, my Sam-dad," said Elanor.

Legolas laughed. Children did not _at all_ understand grown-up humor, though they might try to emulate its structure, and _that_ he found amusing.

"Very well," Legolas said to Elanor. "I will look forward to learning from you soon!"

"I am a good teacher!" Elanor exclaimed happily.

And then she kissed her father on both cheeks and wrapped her arms for a moment around his unbuttoned linen vest, before bounding down the steps with the energy of five grown hobbits. Her curls bounced unbound at her shoulders and fell in waves across her face, and her olive skin was lit bronze by the summer sun as she racketed out the gate and down the lane, like a late-summer cyclone.

Sam stood and shook his head confusedly, watching Elanor's small form dodge a Proudfoot's wagon when she reached the bottom of the hill; she followed the path sharply around a bend and out of sight toward Underhill. Legolas folded his knees in front of him and sat on the top step; he looked up at Sam.

Sam sighed and sat down beside the elf, and he spoke.

"Elanor may not seem it," Sam said. "But she's sad. It's the first time we have ever seen her this sad, and she won't say how come."

Legolas placed a hand on the hobbit's thigh and patted in gently, turning his head to consider one who he had never thought would become such a friend.

"Children are like that sometimes, Samwise," Legolas said sagely. "At least elf-children. Their parents are, in a way, _too_ close to them, so they will not confide in them their secrets."

"But you don't have children, Legolas," said Sam, as Legolas moved his hand from Sam's leg and dropped both hands limply between his own folded knees. "What do _you_ know about children?"

"Well," Legolas said with seriousness, meeting Sam's eyes flatly, "I _was_ one once."

Sam looked at Legolas for a moment, assessing, before Legolas threw his head back and laughed jovially.

"Well," Legolas insisted, "I was!"

"Oh, I don't doubt it, Mister Legolas," Sam said, and he grinned. "I can only imagine you were a handful yourself."

"You imagine rightly," Legolas said with a sad and distant smile, watching the hobbit's face for a moment before continuing. "Well, I will be here for a time, if you will have me, and I would help you however I can, in fixing what is wrong."

Sam pushed a lock of curling brown hair out of his eyes and looked at his companion.

"I could use all the help I can get with her! Sometimes it makes me so hot I could shout," Sam replied. "She's only gotten worse since she started helping that youngest Mister Greenhand, my Gaffer's gardener's son, Holman's boy, you know."

Legolas did not know, but nodded nonetheless. Sam continued.

"Elanor was so angry at first about Mister Greenhand rearranging their family's garden—they've been friendly with us Gamgee-folk so long as anyone can remember—" Sam explained, "so Rosie and I thought to let her learn diplomacy on her own, instead of just being rude to him at market. It's been since late spring that she started 'negotiating' with him, and I can only guess from her moods that it's not going well!"

"Gardens are a divisive topic, I have recently learned," Legolas affirmed.

"Yes, well then," said Sam with a curtailed huff. "Don't I know it? Perhaps she'll want to talk to you, because she certainly doesn't want to talk to me, or her mother."

"She will want to talk to you again soon, Sam," said his friend. "It is how youth are. But I will be here if she wants to tell me about her garden, and all the problems with it."

Sam stood and held out a hand to Legolas, which the elf took, though he did not need the hoist, and Sam set off toward the center of Hobbiton, with Legolas trailing interestedly behind him.

"I want to finish tending the grapes we planted last year for my Gaffer before Pippin gets here," said Sam. "He may be all grown up with a wife of his own, but to me he's still a whirlwind!"

"That he is," Legolas said, stopping in front of the young brown vines and wide, flat drooping leaves. "How may I help?"

Sam looked for a moment immensely relieved.

"Oh good!" he exclaimed. "You can reach the bunches at the top, and get all those dead leaves off. I shan't need to drag out a bench after all!"

Legolas looked at Sam with amusement, but then only nodded. He set to work on tiptoe, inspecting the leaves and gently picking ripe grapes, handing them down, with care, to the distracted parent below.

* * *

Several hours later it was—to Legolas' surprise—past time for elevenses. Sam was quite ready to go back to the house to await Pippin, Diamond, and his children's arrival, but he had thought to wait for Elanor to pass them at the center of Hobbiton, and so walk back to Bag-End soon with her. But now it was past time—almost noon, Legolas thought, looking at the sky—and the little hobbit girl had not passed them yet. Legolas could see the frustration and worry in Sam's face as he peered again to the road at the edge of the town square. Legolas briefly wondered how many times his father had peered longingly down Southward paths while waiting for his own delayed arrivals, but he dismissed the thought quickly and spoke instead to Sam's worry.

"Would you like me to go fetch Elanor?" Legolas asked simply, before continuing when the hobbit remained silent. "So you can head back to Bag-End with the grapes, and we will help to prepare for the meal when we return, together?"

Sam sighed and wiped his hands on his knees hastily.

"Yes, please, Legolas," he said, his voice a low murmur. "Go. She is so frustrating right now that I don't think I could drag her home without yelling at her."

Legolas laughed.

"It will be well, my friend," he said, smiling. "She will grow out of her contrariness soon. I do not mind to help."

"She is only _nine_ , Legolas!" Sam cried, throwing his hands into the air. "Nine! I don't think you understand exactly how much _growing_ she has yet to do!"

Legolas raised his eyebrows at Sam's consternation and then shrugged.

"You are right, I think," Legolas conceded. "I have absolutely no concept of hobbit maturity, nor development."

Sam laughed at Legolas' helpless confession, and the elf continued.

"But _still_ ," Legolas insisted, "it will be well. It always is, after all!"

And so Legolas turned away from Sam and set off in the direction in which his friend had been apprehensively staring.

"Around the hill, past the hole with the white door, and at the second bend take a left—there's a big oak in the front yard—yellow door—and the garden is round back!" Sam called at Legolas' back as he picked up his pace into a trot.

Legolas turned as he ran and waved to Sam.

"I will find her!" he called, and Sam sighed, picking up the heavy bucket of grapes.

Sam slid the bucket onto his arm so its handle yanked painfully at the crook of his elbow, and then he started the long and hot walk back up the hill to his wife and his home.


	2. Part II

**Part II**

* * *

Elanor, however, found Legolas before he found her.

Elanor's olive skin was lit bronze with summer sun, and her golden curls were a halo of frizz around her face. She clutched a large green leaf to her chest, from—by the size—what could only have been a monstrous, evergreen oak, and she was out of breath from running. As Elanor approached Legolas, he could tell she had been crying, for there were light tracks reflected in the high-sun's dazzling light, and her breath hitched unchecked. There was a rip on the knee of Elanor's bloomers and a bloodied scrape beneath the fabric on one kneecap, as if she had fallen in haste.

Legolas felt himself begin to run.

When Elanor saw Legolas coming closer with speed, she collapsed on her knees on the path in a heap, and dry summer dirt ground into the bones of her little knees and ankles. Her chest was bent over the large oak leaf, and she hid her face completely behind her wild mane.

"Elanor?" Legolas asked, dropping to the ground in front of her.

He tentatively placed a hand on her small shoulder.

"Why do you cry, fair one?" Legolas asked.

Elanor jerked away from his hand and clenched her small fists around the oak leaf.

"Do not call me _fair_ one!" Elanor said with anger. "And _do not_ touch me!"

Legolas folded his hands together in the space between his knees, where he hovered above the ground on his heels in front of her.

"All right, Elanor," Legolas said softly. "I will call you by your name, and I will not touch you."

Elanor looked up at Legolas, and he saw there were still tears on her face, and that it was pink and flushed.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and then wrapped her arms around herself on the road.

"Come," Legolas said in what he hoped was a calming tone. "Let us move from the path."

"I do not want to go home," Elanor said.

Legolas frowned as he stood and walked to the edge of the road, sitting cross-legged in the grass and facing his charge.

"Your Sam-dad and mother are waiting for you at home," said Legolas, patting the grass beside him.

Elanor scooted a few feet and then pushed off the ground with her hands before running nimbly to the grass, sitting cross-legged on it, too, and facing the elf, though she did not look at his face; she instead played with the large, leathery leaf in her hands.

"I do not want to see my Sam-dad," said Elanor.

"He cares about you very much," said Legolas. "Why do you not want to see him?"

"Sam-dad will be angry," said Elanor.

Legolas smiled vaguely.

"Elanor, I have known your Sam-dad for longer than you have lived," he said. "I do not think your Sam-dad truly capable of anger."

"He'll be angry at me for _this_!" Elanor cried with despair, before tapering softly off. "For I have been telling him _lies_."

When she finished speaking her voice was a scratchy whisper, like corn stalks abandoned in a field, dried up after the harvest, their unwanted husks like deadweights on dead plants, shivering in an early winter breeze.

That burdened little voice cut into Legolas' heart and he was for a moment frozen; he stared at his fingers, which were interlocked and rested on the grass between his legs.

Elanor had been telling lies? Legolas considered the idea hazily. What was he supposed to do with such information? He was not a parent, and did not know. Should he act angry, or ignore the statement, or talk with her about the weather?

"Tell me what that means," said Legolas, instead, and he started, surprised by his own voice.

Elanor took in a quick deep breath and barreled into his question.

"I told Sam-dad that I have been going to Mister Greenhand's to do chores in his garden," said Elanor ruefully, and she leaned forward now over her crossed legs so that her head was pressed into the lap of her dress, and her small elbows were bunched against her sides. "And I _have_ been helping him with chores all summer, but a few weeks ago he started asking for _more_ chores— _different_ ones!—" she whimpered, "and I thought if I wanted to save the beautiful tree that I could not say no, and now I know I will be in _such_ trouble!"

Legolas paused. Elanor was upset, so whatever she was trying to talk to him about must be dreadful, at least to a small child. But, Legolas was also vaguely aware that whatever Elanor was talking to him about was likely beyond his skills and age—he was simultaneously too far from his rambling upbringing to understand her pain instinctually, yet not far enough removed from his own youthful trials to be healed from them and, with distance, have learned their lessons.

Elanor's back heaved and hitched in a slow panic as she confessed. Legolas raised his eyes to the clear blue sky for patience and ran a hand through his loose hair before speaking.

"Why are you telling me this?" Legolas finally asked quietly.

Elanor did not respond.

He considered the trembling back of the little girl beside him; she was so small and so young and Legolas was undone by it; he had not felt so vulnerable in a very long time, perhaps since his own childhood.

A sob shook Elanor's back. Legolas could not help the instinctual shift of his weight as he leaned forward, reaching out a hand toward her tiny shoulder blades to offer comfort. But the moment Legolas' hand brushed the back of her summer shift, Elanor sat up abruptly and slapped away his hand with ferocity, and then she struck out a balled fist with such force that—in his increased proximity—her knuckles dug into his cheek, and then a second, and harder, panicked strike had the heel of her little childish palm hitting squarely Legolas' right eye.

Legolas jumped in surprise and withdrew his hand but otherwise did not react; he did not want to further upset the small hobbit. That being said, he could not open his watering eyes now to the strong sunlight, so he kept them for a moment tightly shut, and then shaded the struck eye with a cupped hand as he opened them.

Elanor fell back into a heap once Legolas' hands were away from her, and she fell, too, into silence.

Legolas thought for a moment, and closed his right eye, the world's dimensions shifting slightly as he watched the child with one eye instead of two. Legolas was fairly sure he could not convince Elanor to come with him to Bag-End in this state, and he did not want to touch her again to encourage her to follow him there. He was sure he would end up quite bloodied, and Elanor would be crying, and they would be a sorry and unexplainable mess on the doorstep of Samwise' home. No, Legolas thought, he would not be trying to move her.

"I am sorry I hit you," said Elanor.

"It is all right," Legolas said sincerely, opening his eye again and blinking away the pain before bringing his other hand to curve along his brow-line, too, to further shade his face as he watched her.

And it was, of course, all right. For while it would surely bruise, and he might even have a black eye, he had definitely had worse (though never before from a hobbit, he thought, and definitely not a hobbit _child)_.

"Why are you telling me about Mister Greenhand?" Legolas tried again.

Elanor gripped the oak leaf tightly in her hands before answering in a quiet and shaking voice; her head was still hidden in the folds of her dress and so muffled slightly her words.

"Because you are not my Sam-dad nor my mother and you don't know me well enough to be ashamed," Elanor whispered. "Everyone says I am so fair and pure but I'm not. Every time he wanted—every time Mister Greenhand—every time he wanted _me_ he called me his _fair_ one. And I can't bear it—I can't keep it to myself anymore, Mister Legolas. It is wrong!"

Legolas' eyebrows twitched under his shading hands, and then he froze again in that moment, and his stomach felt powerfully sick.

He was _stupid_ to have taken so long to realize what the child was trying to say. Stupid!

He did not stir or speak as Elanor settled into the quiet depths of her confession.

Finally, with one opened eye, Legolas shifted slightly and looked away from Elanor's little body; he watched the wind pull at the tall tips of a clump of fully blooming joe-pye weed a very long way off. He watched a goldenfinch alight on one of the swinging purple weeds, and felt bile for a moment burn at the back of his throat. A harsher breeze stirred the weeds beside the road, and a whiff of cow swept past them in the wind, before it smelled again like a hot, dry afternoon.

Legolas swallowed thickly and pulled away from the world that seemed suddenly to assault his bodily senses.

It was too much, and a dark comprehension.

For though what Elanor referred to was an almost unknown crime amongst elves, it was rampant in Men, and Legolas had never considered whether adult hobbits preyed on children in the same way as men—he had never before had to consider it.

Legolas felt his heart beat strongly at the back of his throat, and he watched the finch twitter from weed to weed, unseeingly—he was unequipped to deal with this situation. He was thoroughly and unequivocally unequipped! Why had he been given this moment, with this child, in this place?

He was a warrior and a friend, maybe, and often a mentor to young folk, but he was a male elf. And though his body and soul had suffered much trauma by many different hands in his long years, they had never suffered in the very same manner to which his friend's tiny daughter now alluded.

Anything he said would come to ruin!

But, Legolas made himself slow his racing thoughts, and rationally think. He should at least clarify her meaning before determining his recourse—he could not choose rashness with a little one watching. Legolas observed with both eyes now, squinted, a jumping spider tucked in the crook of a leaf of grass by his feet, and when the tiny arachnid took off through the air unexpectedly, Legolas suddenly realized that Elanor still sat quivering in her silence and awaited—in fear—his reaction.

So he let his own thoughts and fears and plans go, and focused instead on the child before him; his eyes became more aware of her small form, the way the wind played at the pink dress on her back.

"Elanor," Legolas whispered now, too, trailing off for a moment, watching again the faraway bird, but then he turned his gaze from the finch, as it launched from the joe-pye and flew farther off.

He looked at her again and continued.

"My dear Elanor," Legolas tried again, "how did Mister Greenhand's chores _change_?"

Elanor heaved a sigh so large that Legolas thought her little chest might burst, and then she flopped dramatically—and with some relief—onto her back. She pulled her knees up so they formed a triangle with the ground, and in her little dress she looked like a tent. She lay her arms across her face and kept the oak leaf clutched tightly in one hand.

"At first they were normal chores, like weeding and drawing water. I even spent time with Mister Greenhand in his house, sketching plans for the garden," Elanor explained, her voice still low but occasionally squeaking. "I didn't want him to cut down the oak, but Misses Greenhand wants flowers by the front walk, so he needed the oak gone for the sun. But I made up a plan for him so he wouldn't have to cut the tree."

Elanor sat up abruptly and pulled her knees to her chest. She peered out at Legolas from between a slit in her crossed arms.

Legolas sensed that something was about to break, and so he pressed forward reluctantly.

"Very well. But then _how_ did the chores _change_?" he asked again, very quietly, but insistently, and he could not meet her eyes.

And suddenly Elanor began to sob, and she reached out a hand toward Legolas, but the elf did not move a muscle, for he did not want to take the hand and cause her to panic, though neither did he want to ignore it and make her cry more.

"Please be kind to me!" Elanor wailed, with tears. "You were so nice last time you were here. Please do not be angry!"

The child surprised him again, and he dropped both hands from his face into his lap as she entreated him, before raising them once more, unsure of what to do with himself, and wanting desperately—more than anything—to not cause harm. His hands flittered uselessly in the air above his brow for a moment, before they settled again above his eyes as he spoke.

"Oh, I could not be angry with you, Elanor," Legolas sighed, but he could feel the blood pounding in his ears as he said the words, though he was definitely not angry with _her_.

"But," she said in a small voice, "you _feel_ angry."

The child was inordinately perceptive, and Legolas smiled slightly.

"It is not you with whom I am angry," he said simply. "But what _happened_ , little one?"

Elanor's small hand grasped the belt at Legolas' sleeveless tunic and she pulled herself closer to him, curling up on the grass near his thigh as she spoke.

"Please be kind," Elanor repeated, hiding her face in the grass and pressing her cheek into the soft cotton of Legolas' pants.

"I will be kind, Elanor," said Legolas quietly and firmly, as she pulled his shirt with the insistence of a child seeking unconditional reassurance. "I owe you nothing but kindness."

There was silence for some time, except for the occasional cricket and the creak of trees. Legolas heard the rustle of weeds as a sparrow launched this time from the joe-pye's heights. He felt the child's wet breath sigh once onto his skin, warmly through the loose twill, and he looked at her—Elanor's whole body had relaxed considerably; he sensed she was more at peace, not prepared to strike out, and willing now to accept comfort.

He, too, felt relieved.

Eventually, Legolas dropped his hands from where they had been shading his face and gingerly placed one on Elanor's small shoulder. She sniffled, and leaned into the blameless touch.

"I can't _tell_ you what he did," Elanor finally said. "But you have to know what I mean by it!"

Legolas nodded, then realized she could not see him, for she was still curled against his thigh, so he said instead, "I know what you mean by it."

"It scared me and hurt me," Elanor continued, "and they were not chores for the garden. I didn't even know what he wanted from me, and I didn't understand for a long time what it meant, because he had been kind for so long before..."

Legolas frowned at her small back and spoke firmly in the simplest Westron he could think of.

"That is not true kindness, little one," he said. "Kind people ask nothing in return for their kindness."

Elanor sat up and leaned suddenly toward Legolas, taking his hair in hand.

"I like your hair," she said, unexpectedly, and the air around them seemed to lose some of its fraught energy.

Legolas laughed.

"And I like yours!" he replied with a true smile.

The despair lifted almost entirely from the space between them, with such suddenness that it felt as if the summer came crashing in to replace the fleeing anguish, and it was startlingly heavy on them both in a bright and alive way.

Legolas felt abruptly at ease.

He let Elanor pull and tug at his hair, and sat passively, offering comfort through his steady presence as they both breathed in the scents of dry grass, the freshness of red clover, honeysuckle on the stirring wind. There was peace as Elanor's pudgy fingers plaited loose braids in his hair. Legolas watched her face as she worked, and with each jerk of her little hands, her eyebrows seemed to release more tension, until her brow was relatively smooth. Eventually, Elanor dropped her green oak leaf into Legolas' lap and scooted on her knees around to his other side, so she could take up more hair. She braided those locks, too, though that side more tightly, so they were shorter than the rest of his hair, and it gave him a very lop-sided appearance.

A long while passed, and finally, when the child had run out of hair to braid, Legolas spoke.

"Have you talked to anyone else about this yet, Miss Elanor?" he asked.

"No, but I should have told before," she said, falling back onto her rump and looking at the handiwork that framed Legolas' face. "You're the first."

"Well," said Legolas simply, taking her own hair now in his hands, "that is all right, and I am glad you told me. What made you decide to tell today?"

At the feel of hair underhand and his fingers' familiar weaving of neat braids, Legolas gathered again control of his emotions and his senses; now that he understood what was going on, and what the child needed, he felt more confident in his ability to help, and return her to Sam, even with his ill-informed efforts, relatively unharmed.

Elanor shifted so that her back was more to Legolas and her small crown easily accessible. She felt his fingers nimbly plaiting her hair as they had once when she was much younger, and she felt around the grass with her hands for a clover, or something pretty. She felt the soft brush of a clover's rounded head in her childish hands, and she picked it, handing it over her shoulder to the elf, who braided it into her messy hair without missing a beat.

"I realized Mister Greenhand was telling a lie," Elanor said finally. "He said that he would stop when the oak's leaves fell, but I knew from how he looked at me that he wouldn't let it sleep with winter and, besides," she said smartly, "Some oaks don't lose their leaves at all, you know! Mister Greenhand told me he wouldn't cut down the tree if I did those other chores for him. But it was a lie. I realized today that he would cut the tree down no matter what I did, and I would be left with no tree and no comfort, either way."

Legolas nodded at the child's wise words, and said simply, "I see."

He finished the second braid and braided it in with the first, so that it pulled the hair back from her face and stopped it from spilling over her shoulder. Legolas dropped the first two braids—now tied together into one—and picked up a few strands at the top of her head, to braid back like a net into the first two.

"And today," Elanor said very quietly. "Today he scared me so."

Legolas bit his bottom lip for a moment to stop himself saying anything that would also scare the child. He felt a little sick again, and angry—that anyone would willingly scare another with their untoward lust, would force their body onto another's body and mind and soul, let alone a _child_? He shook his head and watched his fingers take one lock of golden curl after another—over under, over under—until he felt he could speak without a tremor in his voice.

"I am so sorry he scared you today, Eleanor," he said evenly, and swallowed.

"He was just so…loud. And when you showed up yesterday," Elanor said, rushing on now, as if she would lose steam again if she slowed, "and I thought about how I have already lied to everyone here I trust, it just seemed like a sign. A sign to tell."

Legolas smiled and slipped the third braid under the first two, so all the hair was held back from her face. She felt his hands' movement quiet and turned around to face him.

"How old are you now?" asked Legolas. "For you have grown wise beyond your years."

"Sam-dad says that you think you are very funny, and you say things sometimes that are maybe funny to elves, but to no one else," Elanor replied swiftly.

"Does he say that?" Legolas asked with grin, so slight it only pulled at the edge of one youthful dimple. "Well, maybe your Sam-dad is right."

"He usually is," sighed Elanor, reluctantly.

"Well, however old you are, you are very brave, so I have given you warrior braids," Legolas said.

Elanor jumped and patted at the back and sides of her head.

"But Sam-dad says _you_ are a warrior, from Mirkwood!" she exclaimed suddenly, running her hands down the braids on the back of her small head. "Where are yours?"

"I am not from Mirkwood anymore," Legolas said simply. "And I _was_ a warrior. I have fought enough, and now I am done."

"Oh," said Elanor. "Then what are you now?"

Legolas thought for a moment before replying; he had not answered that question in many long years—he was before always just a servant of his people, a warrior, a leader of elves. Now he was just one wandering elf among hundreds in a new wood, and, while their leader, he spent more time now in the trees than at the council table, more time with his knees in the dirt and his hands in the soil than in training or trade. What _was_ he now?

"I am, I suppose," Legolas finally said simply, in words Elanor would understand, "now a gardener."

"Hm," Elanor said, considering. "I am, too, you know. That's my name—Gardner."

Legolas nodded.

"But maybe I want to be a warrior!" Elanor exclaimed.

"Maybe you do," said Legolas. "You are brave enough."

"Aye," Elanor said with a small smile. "And warriors can protect themselves from anything and anyone."

Legolas smiled down at her again, and decided to ignore the last comment. Warriors could definitely _not_ protect themselves from everything and everyone, but if that was the comfort Elanor needed right now, it was not his place to take it from her.

"Well," Legolas finally asked, "would you like to go for a walk, or go to Bag-End to see your parents, or something else?"

"I would like to walk home," said Elanor, rising to her tiny feet. Legolas stood, too.

"And would you like a hand to hold or would you prefer I just walk beside you?"

"Whatever _you_ want is fine," Elanor said.

She looked then at the ground and at the large oak leaf she had let fall from her hands; her shoulders were slumped and small.

"Nay," said Legolas abruptly, "it is not whatever _I_ want. You are in control of this situation with me. _You_ are allowed to make this decision."

"I would prefer to just walk beside you, then," Elanor said quietly; she bent to pick up her wrinkling oak leaf from the ground.

Legolas patted her shoulder as she straightened, and then took a step back toward the road. Elanor followed him like a shadow.

"Good. Thank you for letting me know," Legolas said. "Now Elanor, would you remind me how to get home?"

* * *

They walked in silence for a long time, until they were almost to the hill at the base of Bag-End.

Finally, Elanor looked up at Legolas' face, high above her. She watched the braids she had woven into his wavy hair swing at his cheeks, one now beginning to swell from her own hand.

"Do we have to tell Sam-dad?" Elanor asked.

Legolas was silent for a moment.

" _We_ do not have to tell him, but even if you do not want to tell him, I will have to," he said. "It is my responsibility as a grown-up and as Big Folk to keep you safe from harm, and it is your Sam-dad and mother's job to protect you, and all our jobs as adults to make sure that hobbit can never harm other children."

"He has a little girl," Elanor said. "She is four and her name is Primrose.

"Hm," said Legolas thoughtfully.

"I do not want _you_ to tell Sam-dad," Elanor said firmly while still Legolas _hmm_ ed.

"Tell me what you would like me to do, then," said Legolas, as he watched a cloud pass over the retreating sun—it had to be two by now; Sam would be beside himself with worry.

"I want you to come with me, when I tell him," she said. "I'm not scared of you, and it is the first time I have ever lied to them about anything, and I can't tell the truth now all alone."

"Oh Miss Elanor," Legolas sighed. "Lies are complicated, and I do not think in this case that you really told one at all. It is not your fault, what Mister Greenhand has done with you, and you did not _want_ to tell the lie. There are so very many people who love you that you could never be alone, in this trial in your life and in any other, on fair roads or rough, because you are kind and good, and there will be always someone at your back."

Elanor looked up at Legolas' face again.

"Can I have your hand now, Mister Legolas?" she asked.

"Yes, little one," he said, stretching out his hand toward her as an offering.

She stopped walking but ignored his hand. Legolas watched her warily for a moment, worried she had again become upset, but at her next words, Legolas heaved an internal sigh of relief—he did not know how much more energy he had for effectively managing children's grief.

"Can I have a ride, actually?" Elanor asked.

They were at the base of the hill, and the hike would be long and hot for a little hobbit at the height of the afternoon, and so he answered swiftly.

"Of course," said Legolas, dropping to his heels and holding his arms open for her. Elanor crawled swiftly into them and closed her eyes as Legolas lifted her up and stood.

Elanor tucked her head into the space between Legolas' ear and the curve of his strong shoulder. With her little hands she undid the braids around his face, and pressed her mouth against his tunic, eventually wrapping her right hand in a lock of his hair, and turning her head toward his neck. Legolas could feel her breath hitching with each step and occasionally a sniffle would sound loud in his ear. He felt dampness on his skin, soaked through his shirt's light summer linen, from her eyes and mouth and nose, and he raised a hand to Elanor's hair as he walked, running gentle fingers through it as they headed up the lane and towards Bag-End. Legolas sang softly to her and he could feel Elanor crying and then calming and crying and calming again, tucked behind the curtain of his hair and hidden from the faces of curious children clung to their mothers' aprons, and eventually she was quiet.

At the gate, Elanor asked to get down, and when Legolas opened the gate for her she took two of his fingers in hers and gripped them tightly. Legolas looked down to see her shoulders set and her large green leaf held in front of her chest like a shield. She had the look of a small warrior on her face that for a moment quivered, but then she looked up to Legolas from very far below with wide bright eyes, sharp as emeralds.

"You are doing the right thing, darling Elanor," Legolas said to her softly.

"How do you know?" she asked.

"I just do," he said.

Elanor nodded at Legolas—satisfied—and then rolled back her small shoulders and shook her small head so that her curls bounced under the braids on her back.

"Well then," Elanor said, squeezing Legolas' fingers. "Come."

And she went marching to the front door and leaned against its big red expanse with a small shoulder. Legolas ducked, and Elanor pulled him fully inside.


	3. Part III

**Part III**

* * *

Legolas suddenly wished he had time to talk to Sam before Elanor told her truth.

"Elanor," he asked quickly, "could you pour your father a tall glass of water? For he has been at work in the gardens of the town all day and may be weary."

"Oh not weary, Mister Legolas," said Samwise. "I am just hot and sweaty, to be honest."

Elanor nodded to Legolas, and he saw her swallow nervously before running from the room and to the well in the yard, for their water pitcher was empty.

Legolas sat down cross-legged in front of Sam so that their eyes were at nearly the same level.

"Sam, Elanor has something to tell you that you will find unpleasant," said Legolas. "Her confession to me is what took us so long."

"What've you done to your face?" Sam interrupted suddenly.

"Wait, my friend," he said, "that is part of the tale."

Legolas took a steadying breath before pressing on. This was harder for Elanor and Sam to live through than it was for him to tell, he reminded himself sternly, as he had when returning from the battlefield with a few less friends many times before.

"It will make you very angry and you may want to take immediate action when you hear what she says," Legolas continued, centering himself by watching the hobbit's eyebrows react with each word, "but I beg you remain calm. She will remember your reaction for perhaps years to come, and you want her memory of you in this moment to be one that she can call on for strength, and not one she blocks because she fears what you might do in her name, or for justice. You are, after all, the mayor."

Sam stared at Legolas for a moment with his mouth open, before slamming his lips shut and stuttering.

"By the stars, Legolas," Sam asked. "Has she _killed_ someone?"

Legolas threw his head back for a moment and laughed at the absurdity, but then stopped himself, remembering the circumstances.

"Nay, Master Samwise," Legolas replied, subdued. "Elanor has not killed anyone, though perhaps I should have." He paused. "But it is not my place to tell you. Let her come and talk to you, and then once she is well, you and I will talk a bit and mayhap seek out Pippin and then Meriadoc—perhaps even Aragorn—for counsel. And so, one step at a time, we will make it right."

Sam looked doubtful but finally shrugged.

"All right. I've trusted you before and I'll trust you now, too, I guess," said Sam. "Should I have my Rosie in here?"

Legolas frowned, looking around suddenly. "Where is your Rosie?"

"Pippin's late, so we skipped elevenses, and Rosie's now laid up in bed," said Sam. "She is tired by the baby that will be here soon."

Legolas raised an eyebrow at him and his lips parted slightly in surprise.

"You _had_ to have noticed?" Sam asked with astonishment.

"I only just arrived yesterday!" Legolas said, laughing. "And none of your letters told me you were to be a father four times over!"

Sam smiled at him and said proudly, "Well, I am."

"And a fine one you are!" Legolas exclaimed. "And I would fetch Rosie, I think, just so Miss Elanor does not have to twice tell her tale."

"All right," Sam said, and he hurried off to rouse his wife.

When Elanor came back a moment later, she looked alarmed.

"Where is Sam-dad?" she cried, a glass of water clutched in each small hand.

"He is only getting your mother," said Legolas quickly, not rising from his seat. "Is it all right if your mother is here?"

"Yes," said Elanor. "Here, Mister Legolas. I got you a glass, too, for perhaps you are tired also from carrying me up the hill."

Legolas laughed and took the glass from her. He was not at all tired, but he had come to realize that he adored the child, and would indulge her.

"Indeed! It is hot outside!" he said affectionately. "Thank you, Elanor, for you are too kind of heart."

Elanor smiled at Legolas and sat down on the floor beside him.

And when Rosie and her Sam-dad had come back in the room and asked Elanor what it was she had to tell, she asked them first a promise.

"Do you promise you will still love me," Elanor asked. "No matter what?"

"We have loved you since you were first given to us, Elanor!" Rosie exclaimed, one arm around her husband's shoulder and the other laid on her pregnant belly.

"We have loved you since you turned your eyes to your mother and me," said Samwise. "You are our beautiful and bright flower, pure as snow, blooming in summer and winter and hardy, too, as a dwarf."

Legolas smiled. Sam was yet a wordsmith.

"We will love you no matter what you do, no matter what has been done to you— _no matter what_ ," Sam continued. "We'll love you, brave Elanorellë, forever and always—you, the first thing we made together, the first thing we loved besides each other."

Sam reached up to squeeze the hand that Rosie had looped across his shoulders.

"Nothing could ever make us stop loving you," Sam finished imploringly.

There was a moment's silence, a beat, and then the ever-familiar, tremulous question of an unsure child.

"So," said Elanor slowly, "you promise?"

"Of _course_ we promise," her mother breathed out, like a soft rush of spring air.

And when Legolas felt Elanor's hand wrap around his middle and ring finger again—her small fingernails digging into the fabric on his legs—and Elanor took a deep breath to tell her big truth in her tiny little voice, Legolas felt a tear he had not known he shed run down his jaw and chase the line of his neck.

Sam had said words most children could only wish to hear from their parents, and Legolas realized for the first time that day—for a reason unknown to himself—that he was truly crying; the tears stung the raw bruise that blossomed still upon his face.

* * *

 _Thank you for reading! I enjoyed playing with descriptive language in this story, writing a hobbit child, and exploring a more mature Legolas. Please consider dropping a review on the way out!  
_


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